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What is reasonable setup time for users in today's world?
Long time since I've posted here.
So I've decided to try out a couple low end and cloud providers in a attempt to find the lowest latency for a gaming VPN since my ISP's routes are wack (80ms+ to AWS Virginia and Ohio).
I've had accounts with AWS and Google for VM's. But recently even signed up for IBM Cloud (Softlayer) and Alibaba Cloud. Everyone is instant and I could start creating VM's under 10 minutes from account creation.
I also decided to try out one low end provider that is popular here. Simple ping tests put them around ~38ms to VA/WDC, so I decided to signup on Sunday. It took them until today (Wednesday) to send out a email requesting my ID and a utility bill. While I don't mind sending these to them, both AWS and Alibaba have plans similar to them, with Alibaba going through the same routes as them (Cogent) and is less expensive (@$4.50 vs $5). It took them nearly 3 days to request this information.
Maybe I'm just getting used to popular cloud providers along with hourly billing.
From your opinion, what is a reasonable "onboarding" or setup time for providers before your not even interested anymore (requesting a refund or chargeback for not receiving a service)?
Comments
for me personally 1 - 3 hours is very reasonable, but for some 30 mins is ages.
for some people its too expensive.
P.S. Some people do have very high expectation for very ridiculously small budget (as nowadays £5 or $5 is nothing, ok, one cup of coffee!) which is not worth to have such customers.
1-3 hours is reasonable. Like I said in the post, 3 days before getting a request for more information is just uncalled for in my opinion.
While I do agree on the $5 argument, I just don't understand why its not just automated provisioning, especially for that pricing or just increase the pricing.
New customers are risky (spam, portscanning, DoS, other types of abuse). Manual review on the first order mitigates that risk somewhat as you can check for any evidence that someone might be involved in that type of activity before activation.
If the setup isn't instant I'm not interested.
As far as I remember, I've only had to verify an account once, by providing an ID and a utility bill, to PayPal, like 8 years ago and I still regret it, I don't even use PP anymore.
So it depends on the provider, if it's a provider who I know I can trust (based on reviews and reputation), I might provide them with identifications to verify my account, but most likely I'll just find another provider or just stick with the ones I already use.
VPS should be automated,
I expect same day delivery from OVH and Hetzner
If its something more custom I can wait 24 hours or even 48 hours.
If its beyond 48 hours, I'll just be disapointed with the delivery time.
After 3-5 days I would make a ticket unless instructed otherwise in order page.
After 1 and half week I would make a chargeback depending on whats in the ticket (Obviously I would ask for a refund first).
If its something like Coronavirus or Shortage of hardware or problems at DC or the workforce its understandable and I would continue to wait.
7
While I understand that provisioning can be a challenge, I usually go for hosts that claim instant provisioning. By nature, when I am in the mood to work, I need those vpses up ans ready to do so as well.
Under 7 mins.
Reasonable is under 2 minutes after received and confirmed payment.
It seems like I'm a bit more lenient than most, but I consider anything under 24 hours to be reasonable.
If a host expects setup time to be more than an hour or two, I feel like they should mention the expected delivery time in a "disclaimer" inside the offer post. If you are looking for cheap deals it's not unreasonable for providers to take the time to inspect orders and prevent fraud.
2 to 3 business days for a VPS is reasonable for me. Ofcourse the billing term also should be started AFTER setup, not when I paid for it.
3 to 4 business days for a custom VPS or dedicated server.
Anything less then that is a added benifit, anything more is just unwanted delays.
Don't get me wrong but, it's 2020 instant setups should be a thing.
Even a 2/year vm from @Cam has instant setup
Personally I feel that nowadays there are those who expects their services to be provisioned as soon as possible (a.k.a instantly) just so that they don't want to feel like they've paid for nothing - if you get what I mean
A vps should be instant, it should be up and running as soon as payment is processed. I would accept a delay if the order triggers some kind of abusefilter and the provider requires some kind of verification, but if it's a clean buy of a template vps it should only take minutes. I have however never triggered any abusefilters since I use my real name and never use vpn for internet traffic.
If it's a dedicated server it's another story, then there is possibly hardware to move around and stuff.
setup time should be communicated within the offer, so everyone can set their expectations accordingly. as a potential client, if there is no mention of automatic provisioning then don't expect it just because the big players do it 🤷♂️
better read and understand the ToS and offer description before your order... ;-)
The only reason I can see in delay for provision of VPS is to verify the payment manually.
VPS isn't the bare metal servers that needs to be setup manually, they can be done automatically.
Wasn't most of that popular with companies like Santrex and misc back in 2010? It's nearly 10 years later and automated processes should be looking out for that, especially for immediate large outgoing connections.
I know its your opinion, but that's unreasonable, especially in today's world. I can understand 2-3 days for a bare metal server or 7 to 14 for a custom server, but 2-3 business days for a VPS is awful and tells me as a new client that they either aren't interested with me as a client or are doing some ancient processes with overwhelmed support.
Never was listed, I was expecting immediate or next business day setup, but nearly 3 business days for a onboarding email asking for more information is just stupid.
They didn't accept Discover so I paid through Paypal, went through successfully and is how I paid with Alibaba Cloud/BuyVM and others with 0 issues.
It's still very common for abusive people to try to sign up. DoS has become a lot less common since HF banned booters in 2016.
You can only automate so much in terms of blocking malicious traffic, so it's very valuable to the provider to prevent these sorts of people from getting a service to abuse. It's also beneficial for the end users, since there will be less IP reputation problems, outages and performance issues due to attacks etc. There's so many ways to game MaxMind and Fraudrecord that you really need a human eye involved IMO.
Obviously some providers will look at the benefit of doing it manually and decide they still prefer to deliver automatically, that's up to them but not my preference personally.
These big players probably have better fraud prevention? AWS, GC and Alibaba are pretty well oiled machines, it's much harder to set something up like that with ready made tools.
Automatic provisioning is a hit and miss. Many providers do it. I guess it also depends on the audience they attract.
Nobody wants malicious actors on their servers, not a provider, or a client. If a provider is performing fraud checks while you are waiting for your order, it is probably for the good for everyone.
that's what I meant, better get your expectations straight so you won't be disappointed ;-)
if it wasn't offered as instant, then it obviously might take some time...
how about contacting presales before your next order and simply ask about provision times? could save you from some more frustration as well ;-)
in the end provision time don't say much about the quality of service afterwards anyway, but it's easy to wrongly assume something that's not neccessarily true or to be expected at all.
just saying...
What can the human access that automation can't? Or you mean the human makes the decision on the spot, no acceptable/unacceptable criteria list?
Pretty much that yeah. You can't automate for all of the ways that a new customer can throw up red flags any more than you can list out all of the individual activities they could do that could qualify as abusing servers. You'd always be one step behind.
Instant, everything else is disliked.
It's far easier for humans to look through both information supplied by prospective clients and anything else available about them and spot red flags.
Intuition goes a long way in this field. I think we're a long way off automatic methods catching up. Tools like maxmind, fraudrecord etc are good - but I would only use them to supplement human review personally.
3+ days is crazy... We only have 12 hours on manually reviewed order that get flagged (Usually VPN orders)
Automation can only go so far... Sadly it can't always determine if orders are legit or fake.
It's 2020, so instant setup should be expected for non-custom offerings.
7 minutes
Every comment here mentioing 2020 make me feel I am ain the future
I think as long as it says somewhere during signup setup time is 30mins or 3 weeks then that's down to you if it doesn't say then you would expect less than 30mins (most control panels are capable of automation and will automatically setup providing certain criteria are met)